1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, such as a printer driver (hereinafter referred to as “driver”) or an image forming apparatus for converting into printing data image data generated by application software (hereinafter referred to as “AP”), in, for example, a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as “PC”) or the like.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, in a printing system, text or the like created by the AP of the information processing apparatus is converted into image data through a GDI (Graphic Device Interface), converted by the driver into printing data made up of a print job unit, which is image command sequence data of a text image or a graphic image, and sent to a printing apparatus such as a printer to be printed.
For example, with an AP such as Microsoft's Excel software, text data or the like can be created in various forms such as a single page, multiple pages, a single worksheet, or multiple worksheets. Then, upon executing printing from the AP of the text data or the like created having the various forms, the driver manages the data as a print unit known as a print job.
Usually, because a single print job is generated by a single order to print and one type of print setting is applied in the print job, printing is executed with the same print setting for all of the pages and all of the worksheets. Therefore, if the desired print settings are set once, the desired printing result can be achieved (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Publication 2004-98375).
In a conventional information processing apparatus, however, to execute, at a time when different print settings are executed for each worksheet to set all of the worksheets to N-UP printing (a function by which the printing is shrunk to fit N pages on a single page), there is a case such that the print settings cannot be changed during printing, so that N-up printing cannot be achieved.
Furthermore, even in a case where the print settings are set to be common for all worksheets, a connection is switched from a printing apparatus connected at a time the worksheet was created to a printing apparatus adopting a different printing quality (resolution) designation format, and in a case where all worksheets are set as N-UP printing, the printing quality (resolution) designation format is changed, so that the print job is broken up and N-UP printing cannot be achieved.